The International Space Station

It's an enormous 300-ton thing orbiting the earth (that's more than a fully loaded Airbus 340). So how did we get something that big up into space? Simple, it was built in space. Rather, it was assembled there. Here's a feature celebrating 10 years of the ISS.
Link to feature

How do spiders cope with weightlessness?

We now know a fair deal about how the human body copes with extended weightlessness. In part, this is thanks to the Soviet cosmonauts who logged epic stays in space. Muscle atrophy and loss of body mass were only some of the learnings.

The International Space Station, which is kept supplied with materials, scientists, and engineers by the space shuttle missions, is presently hosting spiders. One of the objectives is to learn how they cope with zero-gravity.

(Keep in mind that the loss of gravity is not because of distance from earth alone. It is also due to the orbit of the station, which tends to fling objects outwards with about as much force as gravity pulls them inwards. These cancel out, giving you zero gravity.)

The web in space story

Chandrayaan-1 enters lunar orbit

(This is a link to the website of ISRO -- the Indian Space Research Organisation. It features a graphic animation showing how the earth orbit was boosted, how it transferred to an elliptical lunar orbit today, and how it will eventually settle into a circular lunar orbit.)